AIDA Model: Customer Journey Map, Metrics and 5 Examples

The AIDA model says a person moves through four stages before acting on a message: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. On the customer journey, AIDA describes what one touchpoint (an ad, an email, a page, a video) has to do in sequence; the journey itself is a loop of many such touchpoints, so you use AIDA to write and diagnose each asset and a journey model such as See-Think-Do-Care or Google’s “messy middle” to plan the whole path. The model is usually credited to E. St. Elmo Lewis in 1898, but that date rests on one uncited sentence written in 1925, as the history section below shows.

The four AIDA stages: what each one must do and how to test it

Each stage answers one silent question in the reader’s head. Fail it and the reader leaves before the next stage. The pass test column is the check I use on a draft: if the answer is no, that stage is not done.

“Attention, interest, decision, action”: the variant you may have seen

Some textbooks write the third stage as Decision rather than Desire. That wording has an old source. Salesmanship writer Arthur Frederick Sheldon listed the stages in 1911 as attention, interest, desire, and decision and action, according to the historical review by Akinori Iwamoto in the Japan Marketing History Review (2024). Desire is the emotional want; Decision is the moment the buyer commits. For a high-ticket service, it is worth writing both beats: one paragraph that makes them want it, one that makes the choice feel safe.

Where the AIDA model came from (and why “Lewis, 1898” is shaky)

Almost every AIDA article repeats that advertising man E. St. Elmo Lewis created the model in 1898. The primary trail is thinner than that. Here is what the sources actually show, in order:

1. 1898, Lewis’s slogan (as reported later). Lewis is said to have used the slogan “attract attention, maintain interest, create desire”, later adding “get action”. The Wikipedia entry on Lewis supports the 1898 date with a 1904 advertisement that dates his advertising course to 1898.
2. 1904, the four words in print. Iwamoto (2024) identifies a December 1904 article by Seth Brown in Salesmanship: A Monthly Magazine as the first neat statement of Attention, Interest, Desire and Action together.
3. 1910 and 1911, Sheldon formalizes it. Sheldon wrote that four mental states occur in every sale: attention, interest, desire and action. He also added confidence and satisfaction as later states, which is where AIDAS comes from (Wijaya 2012, International Research Journal of Business Studies, credits Sheldon with “permanent satisfaction”).
4. 1924, the funnel shape. Google’s Decoding Decisions report credits William Townsend with adapting AIDA into a funnel in 1924.
5. 1925, the attribution is born. Psychologist Edward K. Strong Jr. wrote in “Theories of Selling” (Journal of Applied Psychology, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 75 to 86) that Lewis formulated the slogan in 1898. Iwamoto points out that Strong gave no source for this (p. 76), and that the claim became the standard history after two later review papers accepted it without checking.

Iwamoto’s conclusion, after searching digital archives for Lewis’s writing from 1898 to 1910, is blunt: there is no evidence that Lewis invented a prototype of AIDA in or around 1898, and Sheldon and editor Frank H. Dukesmith did more to formalize it. The fair way to write the history: AIDA emerged from American advertising and salesmanship writing between roughly 1898 and 1911, is traditionally credited to Lewis on the strength of Strong (1925), and that credit is disputed.

What to measure at each AIDA stage, by channel

AIDA becomes useful once each letter has a number attached. Use the platform’s own metric definitions so your numbers compare month to month.

Four definitions that change how you read those numbers:

• GA4 engagement rate. Google counts a session as engaged if it lasts longer than 10 seconds, has a key event, or has 2 or more page or screen views; engagement rate is the share of sessions that qualify (Google Analytics Help). That makes it a fair Interest signal: the visitor stayed past the headline.
• LinkedIn lead form completion rate. LinkedIn defines it as form submissions divided by form opens, and conversion rate as conversions divided by clicks (LinkedIn Help). A low completion rate with a healthy open count means the form, not the ad, is losing people at Action.
• YouTube Intro retention. YouTube’s “key moments for audience retention” report shows what percentage of viewers are still watching after the first 30 seconds, plus top moments, spikes and dips (YouTube Help). Intro is your Attention score; dips usually mark the spot where Interest broke.
• Email open rate. Apple’s Protect Mail Activity downloads remote content in the background by default, even if the email is never opened (Apple privacy disclosure). Opens from Apple Mail users can therefore be counted without a human reading anything. Judge email Attention on clicks and replies, and use opens only to compare subject lines within the same list.

AIDA analysis: find the leaking stage with stage-to-stage ratios

An “AIDA analysis” is simply measuring how many people survive each stage, then comparing each ratio to your own baseline. Here is the math on an illustrative LinkedIn campaign for a bookkeeping firm (the numbers are an example, not benchmarks):

Overall, 9 calls from 320 clicks is a 2.8% conversion rate, which hides where the problem sits. The ratios do not: Interest fell furthest against baseline (79%), so the fix is the first screen under the headline, the part that has to prove you understand the problem. Rewriting the button would address the healthiest stage. Change one stage at a time and test it properly; the sample size rules in our A/B testing guide apply here, because a 9-conversion month is too small to call a winner on its own.

AIDA vs AIDAS vs See-Think-Do-Care vs the messy middle

AIDA is not the customer journey. It describes the persuasion sequence inside a single message; journey models describe how a buyer moves between many messages over weeks or months. The table shows how they line up.

What Google’s messy middle research found

Google’s Decoding Decisions: Making Sense of the Messy Middle (Rennie, Protheroe, Charron and Breatnach, 2020, 98 pages) started with a review of marketing models beginning with AIDA, then observed real shoppers and ran an experiment: 31,000 UK online shoppers across 31 categories, 310,000 simulated purchases. Its core finding is that buyers alternate between two mental modes. Exploration is expansive, adding brands and options to a consideration set. Evaluation is reductive, narrowing them down. A trigger starts the process, and shoppers loop between the two modes until they buy.

Two results matter for AIDA users. First, simply showing shoppers their second-favourite brand moved 30% of simulated car (SUV) buyers away from their stated first choice, and the share ranged from 18% for smartphones to 44% for bathroom suites. Second, when the researchers gave a second-choice shampoo brand strong versions of all six biases they tested (category heuristics, power of now, social proof, scarcity, authority, and power of free), it took 90% of preference from the first-choice brand. In AIDA terms, Desire and Action are won or lost inside the evaluation loop, so proof and offer terms need to show up at every touchpoint, not only at the end of a funnel.

How to map AIDA onto the customer journey

Run AIDA once per stage of the journey, with a different Action each time. Kaushik’s 2015 post defines See as an audience with no commercial intent, Think as weak intent, Do as strong intent close to purchase, and Care as loyal, repeat customers. The Action you ask for should match that intent:

The common mistake is running a Do-stage Action (“Book a call”) on a See-stage audience. That is not an AIDA failure, it is a journey mismatch. For the funnel side of this, see how we lay out marketing funnel stages from awareness to revenue.

5 AIDA examples, annotated stage by stage

All five are written for fictional service businesses. Numbers in square brackets are slots for your own verified proof; never fill them with figures you cannot show a client.

AIDA landing page example: managed IT for law firms

Why it works: the headline qualifies the reader (law firm, 10 to 50 people) and makes a specific promise in one line. The CTA tells the visitor what they get from the call, which lowers the risk of clicking. For structure and form design, see our guide to lead generation landing pages.

AIDA cold email example: bookkeeping firm to a dental practice

Subject (Attention): Month-end close at [Practice name]

Opening (Attention and Interest): “Hi Dr. [Name], most practice owners we work with only see their real profit [x] weeks after the month ends, because insurance reimbursements and supply bills land at different times.”

Body (Desire): “We close books for [number] dental practices by the 10th of the following month, with production, collections and overhead per chair on one page. [Named practice] used that report to drop a supply vendor that was [x]% above their other quotes.”

Ask (Action): “Worth a 15-minute call next Tuesday or Wednesday to see a sample report? If it is not useful, I will not follow up more than once.”

Notes: one ask, no attachment on the first touch. The “will not follow up more than once” line is a risk reducer, so only write it if you mean it. More cadence and deliverability rules are in our outbound lead generation playbook.

AIDA LinkedIn ad example: fractional CFO for agencies

LinkedIn recommends keeping single image ad introductory text within 150 characters and headlines within 70 characters to avoid truncation (LinkedIn ad specs). That forces Attention and Interest into the visible lines.

Measure Attention with CTR, Interest with lead form opens, and Action with lead form completion rate. More on targeting and offers in our LinkedIn marketing for B2B playbook.

AIDA sales page example: HVAC maintenance membership

A sales page is AIDA stretched over a long scroll, so each stage gets several sections:

1. Attention: Headline “Two tune-ups a year, priority booking, and no overtime charges. $[x] a month.” The price in the headline filters out tire-kickers before they scroll.
2. Interest: A short scene the reader has lived: the first hot week of summer, every HVAC company booked for days, and the house at 84 degrees. Follow with what a tune-up checks, as a 10-item list.
3. Desire, part 1 (outcomes): What the member gets, as a table: visits per year, response priority, discount on repairs, transferable if they sell the house.
4. Desire, part 2 (proof): [Number] current members, three named reviews with town names, photos of the technicians, license number.
5. Conviction: The objection block: “Can I cancel?” “What if I need a repair before my first visit?” Answer each in two lines with the real policy.
6. Action: One button repeated after the price table and after the FAQ: “Join and book my first tune-up”. Under it: “Cancel anytime from your account. First visit within [x] days.”

AIDA video script example: 45-second vertical video for an estate planning firm

TikTok’s ad guidance says to introduce your content proposition in the first 3 seconds and prioritize the hook in the first 6 seconds (TikTok Ads Help). On YouTube, the Intro figure shows how many viewers are left at 30 seconds. So the script front-loads Attention:

Have a licensed attorney in your state check every legal statement before publishing, and follow your state bar’s advertising rules.

A classic AIDA advertising example: “They Laughed When I Sat Down at the Piano”

John Caples wrote this headline in 1926 for a U.S. School of Music mail-order ad, per his Wikipedia biography: “They Laughed When I Sat Down at the Piano But When I Started to Play!” The headline does Attention and Interest at once: a social embarrassment everyone fears, then a cliffhanger that forces the next line. Because it was a mail-order ad, the Action was a direct response by mail. Caples later collected his articles into Tested Advertising Methods (1932).

Fill-in AIDA copywriting template

Copy this into a doc, fill every blank, then run the pass/fail checks before anything goes live. It works for an email, a landing page, an ad or a script; only the length changes.

For more on the last row, our call to action examples show before and after rewrites, and the broader process sits in our guide to marketing copywriting.

Where AIDA breaks: what the research says

AIDA is a hierarchy-of-effects model: it assumes people pass through stages in a fixed order. The research has been hard on that assumption.

• The order is not supported. Demetrios Vakratsas and Tim Ambler reviewed more than 250 journal articles and books in “How Advertising Works: What Do We Really Know?” (Journal of Marketing, 1999, vol. 63, pp. 26 to 43). Their generalizations “suggest that there is little support for any hierarchy, in the sense of temporal sequence, of effects.” They propose studying advertising effects in a space with three dimensions, affect, cognition and experience, positioned by context such as product category and competition.
• No proof people pass every stage. Wijaya’s 2012 review, citing Egan (2007), lists three shortcomings of classical hierarchy models: no empirical support that consumers go through each stage, no account of interaction between stages, and little attention to post-purchase experience.
• Real journeys loop. The messy middle research above shows buyers adding and removing options repeatedly, with preference moving between brands inside that loop.

What that means in practice:

• For high-intent traffic (a search for “estate planning attorney near me”, a retargeting ad, a referral), the buyer arrives at Desire. Lead with proof and the offer, and keep Attention to a single qualifying line.
• For cheap, low-risk purchases, trial can come before conviction, and the experience shapes the next purchase. That is the gap AIDAS and Kaushik’s Care stage try to fill.
• For considered B2B services, the buyer will cycle through exploration and evaluation several times. Each asset still needs its own AIDA, but the overall plan should be a journey map, not one long funnel.

Use AIDA for what it is good at: a fast way to write and audit a single piece of copy and to find the stage where people drop off. If you want a second pair of eyes on where your own funnel leaks, you can book a consultation.

Frequently asked questions

What are the four stages of the AIDA model?

The four stages are Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. Attention stops the reader and tells them the message is for them. Interest shows you understand their specific problem. Desire turns your offer into an outcome and backs it with proof. Action asks for one clear next step and lowers the risk of taking it. Each stage must succeed before the reader moves on to the next.

Who created the AIDA model and when?

It is traditionally credited to advertising man E. St. Elmo Lewis in 1898. That credit comes from Edward K. Strong's 1925 article Theories of Selling, which gave no source for it. A 2024 historical review by Akinori Iwamoto found no evidence Lewis created a prototype around 1898 and credits salesmanship writers Arthur Frederick Sheldon and Frank H. Dukesmith with formalizing it between 1903 and 1911.

How does the AIDA model fit the customer journey?

AIDA describes the persuasion sequence inside one touchpoint, such as an ad, email or landing page. The customer journey is the path across many touchpoints. Map them by running AIDA once per journey stage with a different Action each time: follow or subscribe at the See stage, download at Think, book a call at Do, and renew or refer at Care.

In which stage of AIDAS would subtle reminder calls to customers be categorized?

Satisfaction. AIDAS adds Satisfaction after Action to cover what happens once someone has bought: follow-up, reminders, check-ins and support that make the customer glad they bought and likely to buy again or refer. Salesmanship writer Arthur Frederick Sheldon added satisfaction to the sequence in his 1910 and 1911 texts, which is where the S in AIDAS comes from.

In the AIDA structure for short-form video, what must the first 2 seconds achieve?

Attention. The opening seconds must stop the scroll and tell the viewer the video is for them, usually with a named problem, a surprising claim or a strong visual. TikTok's ad guidance says to introduce your content proposition in the first 3 seconds and to prioritize the hook within the first 6 seconds, so Interest has to start almost immediately after.

How do you write an AIDA cover letter?

Open with Attention: the role, plus one concrete result that matches the job ad. Use Interest to show you understand the employer's specific challenge. Build Desire with two or three achievements, each with a number or named project as proof. Close with Action: ask for an interview, give your availability, and say how you will follow up. Keep it to one page.

What is the difference between AIDA and AIDCA?

AIDCA adds Conviction between Desire and Action. Desire is the emotional want; Conviction is the rational reassurance that this is the right and safe choice, built with objection handling, policies, guarantees you can honor and third-party proof. Use AIDCA for high-ticket or high-risk purchases such as professional services, where buyers want the offer but still need a reason to trust the decision.